A is for . . .

. . . apple picking

We used our fine motor skills to pick apples off a tree with tongs. The kids rolled a dice and then picked that many apples off the tree and put them in their bucket. For this activity we used a 6 sided dice and practiced counting the pips (dots) on the side of the dice we rolled. Then we picked that many apples off the tree until our tree was bare. This center was meant to work on the one to one principle when counting. i.e. we count one time for each (one) thing we see.  

I love Makaius's concentration face! :)

For the next apple picking activity we used a 12 sided dice. There were numbered apples on the tree. The kids identified which number they rolled then picked the corresponding apple off the tree. For this activity we were working on identifying numbers. 

 
 . . . ants on a log

Celery, peanut butter and raisins. You can't get more classic than this snack!

. . .  ants

We made thumbprint ants on a letter a. Each child made sure the ants had 3 body parts, 6 legs, 2 antenna, and a face. 

 . . . apples (again.) :)

We did an activity with 10 apples up on top. We did the project seen here, but added an element of complexity. I wrote the numbers using dots instead of writing them completely. The kids connected the dots and traced each number from 1 - 10. Then the kids put the apples in numerical order onto their headband and glued them on. We were working again on number recognition.